Hi David....I was going to say WWWAAAHhhhhhhhhaaaa!! Where's Gore when you need him and his team....Surely there must be more votes they could find for Gorton...Hunting high and low, and underneath, and all around....Surely there must be more... <GG> Here's an article (shows you what LOTS of money will do, plus she considered her financing of her campaign a "LOAN"....anyone know how she intends to pay herself back....???) Also, wonder how "disenfranchised" all of the other people in the majority of counties in WA feel.....
Cantwell wins last unsettled Senate race
December 1, 2000, 05:00 PM
king5.com
OLYMPIA – Democrat Maria Cantwell, a dot-com millionaire who financed her own campaign, narrowly defeated veteran Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, results of a recount confirmed Friday. Her victory creates the possibility of a 50-50 tie in the new Senate.
RESOURCES
• Latest recount results: U.S. Senate race
• Maria Cantwell
• Slade Gorton
Cantwell, a former one-term U.S. House member waging her first statewide campaign, ousted the 18-year incumbent by 2,259 votes, out of nearly 2.5 million cast, as the last of Washington's counties reported their recount results. The initial unofficial count had given her a margin of 1,953 votes.
It was America's last unsettled Senate race.
King County, home of heavily Democratic Seattle, won the race for Cantwell, giving her a margin of more than 150,000 votes. The county was the last of the state's 39 counties to report results of the automatic recount required under state law because the race ended within one-half of 1 percentage point.
Cantwell carried only five counties, but Gorton's big lead in the less populous areas couldn't overcome his challenger's enormous advantage in Seattle.
"This has been the longest three weeks of our lives," said Cantwell's campaign manager, Ron Dotzauer.
Gorton was expected to concede later Friday. He has no immediate plans other than attending a lame-duck session of Congress next week, said spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman. Gorton has been mentioned for a cabinet position in a Bush administration.
The loss was crushing for the senator and his small army of volunteers, Bergman said.
"It is absolutely, incredibly difficult for everyone, especially him," she said.
Cantwell, 42, will join freshmen at orientation sessions next week.
Her election gives Washington two female senators for the first time. Fellow Democrat Patty Murray is in her second term.
Washington joins California and Maine in having two female senators.
Cantwell's victory could also draw Senate Democrats into a tie with the Republicans, leading her party to demand a shared power arrangement, including some committee chairmanships.
If Dick Cheney becomes vice president, he would break ties for the Republicans as the presiding officer of the Senate. If Sen. Joseph Lieberman wins the vice presidency, Connecticut's Republican governor would likely appoint a Republican to his vacated seat, putting the GOP back into a 51-49 advantage.
If Texas Gov. George W. Bush wins the White House and Dick Cheney becomes vice president, Republicans would still maintain nominal control of the Senate even if there is a 50-50 tie. But a protracted negotiation would likely ensue before the two parties came to terms on the allocation of committee seats as well as staff funding.
Gorton, an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and an appropriations power, failed to persuade voters that his clout was too important to give up. The same state dumped a sitting speaker of the House, Tom Foley, in 1994.
Cantwell didn't directly raise the age issue, but called Gorton a man who offered "19th-century solutions to 21st-century problems." She ran as someone who understands the high-tech industry and the New Economy from the inside out.
She also benefitted from Gorton's long list of enemies, including Indian tribes, environmentalists, trial lawyers and abortion-rights activists. They all ran campaigns against the senator. Cantwell had sworn off "soft money" help and refused contributions from political action committees.
When Cantwell started her campaign early this year, she was little known outside her Seattle-area congressional district. But she plowed $10 million into her campaign with her personal wealth from five years at the Seattle-based Internet company RealNetworks.
That allowed her to run a steady barrage of television commercials, starting last May.
Gorton had won six statewide races in Democratic-leaning Washington, three terms as attorney general and three as U.S. senator. His lone previous loss was his first Senate re-election bid, in 1986, to Democrat Brock Adams. He came back with a narrow victory two years later. He was re-elected easily in the GOP landslide year of 1994.
Gorton, an early backer of Bush and his adviser on Western concerns, has been mentioned for Interior secretary or some other top administration post if the Texas governor wins the White House.
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